Climate Change the 'Hot Topic' in theatre this month
This year February seems to be the month for theatre that interrogates the implications of climate change. Commitment to climate change action on the whole is still lacking, and now more than ever we need to pull up our socks and address the issue as quickly and practically as ever, and this month four productions will be reminding us why:
Greenland (National Theatre) draws together several separate but connected stories to unpack the pressing questions that climate change presents to us, and explore the interconnectedness of all living things in the experience of a planet where all of our actions have consequences, and change is constant and inevitable.
Written by Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorner, and directed by Bijan Sheibani, the stories that Greenland conveys are the product of months of interviews with key individuals from the worlds of science, politics, business and philosophy in an effort to understand our rapidly changing planet.
The Heretic (Royal Court) follows Dr Diane Cassell, lead academic in Earth Sciences, in a black comedy as she interrogates the science behind climate change and the position it has begun to occupy in society. At odds with the orthodoxy over the cause of climate change, she finds herself increasingly vilified and is forced to ask if the issue is becoming political as well as personal. Could the belief in anthropogenic global warming be the most attractive religion of the 21st century? What evidence do we need before deciding what to believe?
Written by Richard Bean and directed by Jeremy Herrin.
...and here's a REVEIW of by Fred Pearce in the Saturday Guardian 12/02/2011
Water (Tricycle) inter-cuts between powerful individual stories with the strange beauty of a dream, exploring man’s desire to push himself to the limit in an increasingly unstable world... In Canada two half brothers clash over the legacy of their dead father. Meanwhile in Germany a young female special advisor tries to push through a deal at a political summit, and in Mexico a young Englishman prepares to dive the deepest freshwater cave in the world.
Created by Filter Theatre in 2007 and revived again at the Tricycle Theatre, the play weaves video mixed onstage, live music and performance to create a unique, ‘live chemistry’ experience for audiences, which proves to be as relevant now as when it first went on tour.
Change (Arcola) gives voice to real people already in the grip of climate change. December 2010 saw the worst flooding in Australia since 1974. In July, 10 million people in Pakistan saw their homes damaged or completely destroyed by the floods. The Maldives is at threat of disappearing by 2050 under rising sea levels. Change uses actors as a prism to illuminate heartbreaking and inspiring stories, exactly as told.
